The Devil, himself had never felt pity for the damned he punished.
When she woke, she’d been calm but dazed, almost shocky. She’d had a difficult time looking at Mark, because his outside was so very much the same but his insides…so very much not. The beginnings of grief were stirring in her as she remembered, over and over, that Mark had been there. In hell.
Poor Mark.
She was anxious for the Devil to go. He’d told her he had business here on earth and she had nodded, but the strain of what she’d learned subdued any curiosity she might have been able to muster in regards to his…business.
She was anxious for him to go so she could gather herself back together. She saw the possibility of it, but it was vague and far off. Something she’d need to work toward.
So she’d retrieved Mark’s belongings for him (the Devil) but had been unable to turn over Mark’s old leather wallet with his initials carved into it. Mom and dad had given him that wallet on his eighteenth birthday. Instead she’d stopped at a men’s store and bought him this new one, thin and crisp, and put Mark’s ID and her own debit card in it.
“You’ll have to answer to Mark, Mark Anders,” she’d said on the morning he was to take his leave. He was slipping on the jean jacket and putting the wallet (the new wallet) in his front breast pocket. She was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at her hands clutched loosely in front of her. “I’ll add your name to my bank account this morning so you shouldn’t have any trouble with the card. You should be all set.” She’d glanced up and a small, tense smile ran across her lips and was gone. Then she’d looked back down at the table, so terribly confused by her own motivations. She knew this was not her brother, but his appearance…she couldn’t get past it.
The Devil had laid a hand on her shoulder and she’d smiled the small, tense smile again, but hadn’t looked at him. Couldn’t look at him. He’d gone to the front door and stepped into the cool early morning.
Now he stood in the driveway and checked his breast pocket one more time. The highway was his destination. He’d refused the offer of Kelly’s car. He wouldn’t be needing it.
He looked back at the house and felt a disturbing wave of reluctance to leave. The house glowed in the early morning sun, the white siding clean and the black shutters crisp and straight. Kelly had painted her front door a striking, fire engine red. The flowerbeds were bare but fresh black mulch had been piled in them and they looked anticipatory; ready for this new season and the flowers that Kelly would plant in a few weeks.
The Devil understood that–charming as it was–it was not the house he was reluctant to leave.
It was the woman, Kelly, whom made him reluctant to go away.
He turned away from the house and shrugged, trying to slough off the feeling. Following Kelly’s directions, he set out for the highway.
He walked and paid attention to the fatigue that was already settling into these weak, worn out muscles. Even the pack he’d shrugged onto his back, light as it was, started his thin shoulders aching and twisted a hot knot of pain between his shoulder blades before he’d gone one mile. And he felt hungry, his stomach knotting and growling.
The Devil came upon the highway. It was two-lane, rural, bound on both sides by trees and further down he could see farmland. He was in New Jersey, not too terribly far from Philadelphia, where he thought he would find the lawyer, Thomas Evigan. He wasn’t privy to The Litany anymore, and though it was a profound relief, it also served to cut him off from the path Thomas Evigan had taken.
The Devil stood at the edge of the highway and in the distance, saw a vehicle coming from the direction he did not want to go and in the direction he did. He shrugged the pack from his back, relieved to feel cool air where the straps had dug mercilessly into this body’s shoulders.
He waited.
As the vehicle approached, the Devil felt a building anticipation, which he at first attributed to his mission begun. But as he stood there, the anticipation bloomed larger and larger, unfurling like a heavy, black blossom, taking up all the space for this body’s breath, and this skull began to hum as if filled with a large, poisonous wasp, and the Devil realized he might know who was coming.
The vehicle came around a shallow curve and was fully in view. It was a sunshine yellow 1954 Ford F-100 pickup truck, the front painted in flames so vibrantly red and orange they shimmered as if with actual heat. The truck was a dandy, and would have brought a smile to any man’s lips.
But the Devil did not smile.
The truck slowed to a stop twenty feet from where he stood. Early morning sun glimmered and flashed across the windshield, hiding the driver. The engine idled, rumbling powerfully, a growl that would make any man smile.
But the Devil did not smile.
The engine revved and the truck jumped, playfully, like a tiger cub grown to monstrous size. Then it jumped again, tires chirping on the blacktop.
It was now fifteen feet from the Devil and it jumped a third time, gaining another five. Laughter, chuckling and thin and somehow sardonic, slipped from the open windows of the cab, and the truck jumped again, pulling dead even with the Devil.
The driver leaned over and popped the passenger side door, which yawned wide, barely missing the Devil where he stood. Leaning across the seat, the driver smiled and the smile sat uncomfortably under his jet-black mop of hair and black, sparkling eyes. This man’s thin lips seemed more prone to a sneer than a smile.
“Aye, well, sure and begorrah, if it idn’t ta Divil, hissownself,” he said, his Irish accent so broad it became a caricature; an unflattering one, at that. “Coom ahn oop, Lucifer, an ryde along wit me.” He put his fingers to the rim of the tight, plaid cap that had just appeared on his head and once again his laughter slid forth, mean-spirited and emaciated.
He put his hand out, his smile coiling tightly, a rattlesnake ready to strike…and the Devil took the proffered hand and allowed himself to be pulled into the cab. The passenger door swung shut of its own accord and the pick-up roared, tires screaming against the road, a cloud of blue black building behind it, and shot off in the direction the Devil had wanted to go.
* * *
“It’s been a long time, Am,” the Devil said.
Amon looked askance at his passenger and grinned. The cap had disappeared.
“Aye, that is has, laddie, that it has,” he said. “Ye art soorly missed…” his grin widened, “…doon below.”
The Devil said nothing, only gazed calmly out his window and kept his mind serene. He knew he could not show weakness in the face of this demon–most likely the first of many. But the Devil did not trust this borrowed junkie’s body to do right by him, if worse should jump nimbly to worst. Amon was not the strongest of demons and if they’d met in Hell, the Devil would not have considered him an equal. But Amon was a demon nonetheless, and the demons who’d spent ample time with the humans were the most conniving of all.
And Amon had spent much of his time on Earth, leading the guilty further astray.
“You’re looking pretty thin…and weak,” Amon said, tsking and shaking his head. All traces of an accent had faded from his speech. “That body doesn’t look like a keeper, to me. Think it’ll stand up, Lucifer?”
The Devil never turned, only continued to watch the passing scenery, seemingly unperturbed.
“Let’s cut to the chase, Am,” he said. “And stop calling me Lucifer.”
“Cut to the chase? Oh, my dear Lucifer, that is a funny one you found! Cut to the chase! Must have watched their fair share of action movies, I guess,” Am said and then his voice took on a cozy, sycophantic edge, the accent back, but threading in and out, appearing and disappearing. “Odd isn’t it? How you get a slight taste of the person who’d occupied the body before ye? Tempts you to want a new one every day, aye, laddie?”
Once again, the Devil said nothing, only turned to regard Amon with passive, emerald eyes.
Amon sighed, tilting his head back and rolling his eyes heavenward, drawing it out and giving it full weight and measure, making his exasperation theatrical and obvious.
“You know why I’m here, Lucifer,” he said. “You’re wanted back in Hell. I imagine you can guess who decreed it. Things are getting funky down there.”
“They’re burning, same as always. Nothing is going to change if I’m gone for a time.”
Amon shook his head. “No, no, no, that won’t do…what is Hell without Satan? You’re needed down there, laddie. Your business is not here, it’s there. You can’t slum up here with us…you’re much too important. Management says so, aye?”
“Is that so?” the Devil turned and raised his eyebrows at Amon, politely inquiring. “Who in management?”
“You know who, you know very well who,” Amon said and his tone had lost its teasing quality. His words came out sounding like a jangle of twanged nerves.
“Can’t even say His name, my dear?” the Devil asked, allowing the sarcasm full weight and measure. “Can’t even say ‘God, Himself’? Afraid it will stick in your throat, Am?”
Anger flashed across the demon’s face and his thin lips thinned even more.
“Why are you even doing this, Lucifer? Rumor has it that it’s because of some lawyer? Can that be right?” Amon was shaking his head. “When I first heard, I didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it! Satan, Himself come up from hell to collect a soul? Unimaginable! Even we, Legion, do not presume in the sight of…the sight of…” he trailed off, shaking his head again. “Even we, Legion, would not take a soul. Not without…without…”
The Devil shook his head, a smile playing on his lips.
“You really can’t say it? Still? After all this time?”
Amon’s face reddened with rage and his head seemed to be melting, reforming, pushing itself out of shape. “I can say it! I can say it! God! God! God!…” he screamed, saliva spraying from his mouth and stippling the windshield as shimmering black feathers and a yellow beak grew from his features. “God! Gaw! Gaw!” He continued, his eyes shrinking to small, wet black dots surrounded by a somehow sickly, sunshine yellow. “Caw! Caw! Caw!”
The Devil threw his head back and laughed, liking the way the laughter loosened his belly and soothed his nerves, somehow drawing strength into this weak human form.
Amon’s head snapped up and down and became human again, beak and feathers disappearing in an instant.
“Funny! Funny stuff, asshole!” Amon said, his temper and patience shot.
The Devil wiped tears from his eyes, still smiling.
“Amon, you’re a tool; you always were. Why are you even here?” the Devil said, turning to Amon with a smile.
“Why am I here? Why?” Amon shrieked, reached across and gripped the Devil’s arm, his grip like iron. “Because I’m taking your ass back to Hell, that’s why!”
The old Ford had been going faster and faster and now Amon jerked the steering wheel one handed, and the truck peeled sharply to the left. They screeched across both lanes, turning sideways, sending the Devil crashing into the passenger side door, but still Amon kept a steady grip on his arm. The skinny wheels hitched, hitched again, and then caught, sending the truck end over end. It flipped and flipped again, smashing first the passenger side, then the roof, against the blacktop. It bounced again and now the driver’s side smashed into the road and slid, gouging long furrows.
Amon held his seat and gripped the wheel with one straining hand, teeth pulled back in a grimace. With each bounce his head changed, becoming that of a wolf…a crow…a dog…changing with split second, blurring speed. Black feathers fluttered out the open driver’s side window, coming to rest on the blacktop behind them.
The Devil braced himself, pushing his legs against the floorboards, one arm against the dash and one against the roof. He didn’t bother with trying to dislodge Amon’s hand, there wasn’t time to fight him. If this body were to be killed, or Amon’s body was killed while they were still linked, he’d have to start all over again and who knew if that would even be possible now that God, Himself had caught wind of this disobedient trek.
He drew from the remembered strength of his Satan form, forcing this body according to his will, making the muscles rigid, making it hold on. Minute tears rippled across his muscles and the Devil felt a return of pain, so like the bound and aching limbs of his Satan form, so like it in fact that it was almost comfortable.
And so he strained, sweating, teeth gritted, and held this body in place, tearing muscle and tendon but holding, holding on as the truck flipped. Now slowing, now coming to rest, rocking, metal screeching and protesting and then becoming still, flat on the passenger’s side door, groaning and ticking.
The Devil relaxed all the torn and aching muscles in this body and let it go limp in a heap against the door, realizing that Amon’s hand must have left him at some point in the dizzying flips of the truck. He found he could not even lift his arm, could not shift his legs, could not turn his head to look for Amon.
He must find where Amon had ended up, because he wasn’t in the cab of the truck any longer.
Forcing himself, ignoring the throbbing protests of this body, he turned over and wormed his way out the opening for the windshield. The glass glittered and crunched beneath him as he dragged himself out and into the sunlight. He drew his hands under his shoulders and pushed, forcing this body up and scrambled his feet under himself, groaning, not even aware that he groaned.
Amon sat cross-legged on the shoulder, watching the Devil drag himself from the ruins of the Ford.
“Hey, Lucifer,” he said.
The Devil looked up, hands on his knees, panting. He ran the back of his hand across his mouth, drawing a line of blood across his chin to just under his ear. He noted how Amon shimmered, becoming indistinct, his head seeming to fade into that of a wolf…a dog…a crow, but slowly, almost dispiritedly.
The Devil could see the trees Amon sat in front of, could see right through him to the road he sat on.
“Yeah?” he said.
“I thought I had you for a second there. I should have held on, myself.” Amon had kept the Devil pinned in the junkie’s borrowed body with the touch of his hand. But it had also served to make his one-handed grip on the truck too precarious to withstand the force of the crash.